The Jade Figurine

by Bill Pronzini

  I ate slowly, listening to the hum of conversation. There were a score of tongues and dialects; Singapore is the melting pot of Southeast Asia. I had gotten down to the mangosteen—a thick, pulpy, very sweet fruit—when the three men appeared in front of my table.

  The two on either side were copper-skinned, stoic-featured, and flat-eyed. The taller of the two was Eurasian —almond-eyed, but with fine, straight brown hair; the other was a Malay. They were both dressed in freshly pressed white linen jackets and matching slacks and thin cotton shirts, open at the throat.

  The man in the middle was about fifty, short and plump, and he appeared to be very soft; his skin had the odd look of kneaded pink dough, like a gigantic gingerbread man before baking. His hair was sparse, a kind of neutral straw color, and his eyes were a mild, liquidy blue. There was a distinctively Teutonic look about his face, but it struck me that he was probably Dutch or Belgian, rather than German or Austrian. He wore white also, but there any similarity between his dress and that of the other two ended. The suit was British cut, impeccably tailored; the shirt was Thai silk with long sleeves fastened with jade cufflinks initialed JVR in gold; the shoes were of hand-made leather and polished to a fine gloss. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a huge gold ring with a jade stone in the shape of a lion’s head—symbolic, I supposed, of the Lion City.

  He sat down, carefully adjusting the razor crease in his slacks, on the stool next to me; the other two remained standing. A group of Americans, obviously on some kind of tour, had finished their sugared beancurd at an adjacent table and departed; there was no one, now, within the immediate vicinity.

  The soft man smiled, as if he had just found a missing relative. “You are Mr. Connell, are you not?” he asked. His voice had a saccharine quality that was almost condescending.

  “That’s right.”

  “I am Jorge Van Rijk.”

  I went on eating the mangosteen. “Good for you.”

  He thought that was amusing. Gold fillings sparkled. His laugh had a burr in it that made my neck cold. “I am given to understand that you had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine this morning,” he said. “Monsieur La Croix.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Quite right. He was observed leaving the building which houses your flat in Punyang Street.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Isn’t it?” Van Rijk said. “I wish to know the current whereabouts of Monsieur La Croix.”

  “Why?”

  “A small business matter.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Where might I find him, Mr. Connell?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “He did not tell you where he could be reached?”

  “No.”

  “Really now, Mr. Connell,” Van Rijk said in a mildly reproving voice.

  “Think what you want. I don’t know where he is.”

  He studied me with his mild blue eyes. After a time he said, “May I inquire, then, as to the nature of your conversation this morning?”

  I met his gaze. “I don’t suppose that’s any of your business.”

  “Ah, but it is, Mr. Connell. It is, indeed, my business.”

  “Then ask La Croix if you find him.”

  “An excellent suggestion, of course,” Van Rijk said. “But time is of the essence in this matter. Necessarily, then, I must ask you.”

  “Sorry. It was a private discussion.”

  “I see.” Van Rijk smiled. From the inside pocket of his tailored suit he produced a squarish box of cigarettes. I saw that they were of English manufacture—Players. He flicked the box open with a manicured thumbnail and extended it to me. “Cigarette?”

  I shook my head. “Not my brand.”

  He shrugged lightly, extracted one from the box. He put it between his soft lips and lit it with a thin gold lighter encrusted with tiny jade stones. Through bluish smoke he said, “It is my information that you are a former airplane pilot, Mr. Connell, one not averse to transporting unauthorized cargo for a proper price.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “This is, of course, the reason Monsieur La Croix spoke with you.”

  “Is it?”

  “He wished you to transport him from Singapore, correct?”

  “No.”

  “Of course he did.”

  “Were you there? I don’t fly any more, Van Rijk.”

  “Did you agree to his proposal?”

  “There wasn’t any proposal.”

  “How much did he offer you?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “What was his destination?”

  “If he had one, he didn’t confide it to me.”

  Van Rijk made a sucking sound on his cigarette, and we sat looking at each other like a pair of old enemies. Pretty soon he said, “I have become rather bored with this game of verbal chess, Mr. Connell. You would be most wise to tell me what I wish to know.”

  He was beginning to get on my nerves. “I don’t have to tell you a goddam thing,” I said, keeping my voice equable. “I don’t know who the hell you are, and I don’t really care much. I do know that I don’t like you or your manner or your implications. Do I make myself clear?”

  I watched his eyes change. They were no longer liquidy, and they were no longer mild. He didn’t look quite as soft as he had before. “I am not a patient man,” he said softly. “When I have lost what little forbearance I possess, I am also not a very pleasant man. Ordinarily I abhor violence in any form, but there are instances when I find it to be the only alternative.”

  “So that’s the way you want to play it” I put my hands flat on the table and leaned toward him. “All right, Van Rijk,” I said. “You’ve made your point, now I’ll make mine. I’m not going anywhere with you, if that’s what you had in mind. I’m sure your two bodyguards or whatever they are are armed to the teeth, but I doubt if you’d have them shoot anybody in a crowded bazaar like this one. In fact, I doubt if you’d want to make any trouble at all. So you’ve got about thirty seconds before I push your fat face in where you sit. Those two would get into it, too, and I think you know what that would mean. Would you care to spend some time in a city penjara for street brawling, Van Rijk?”

  Anger blotched his pink cheeks. The other two were poised on the balls of their feet now, watching me with their flat eyes. They were waiting for some sign from Van Rijk.

  But I had judged him accurately. Abruptly, he stood. “There will be another time, Mr. Connell,” he said; the words dripped vitriol. “When the streets are not so crowded, and when the sunlight is not so bright.”

  “Piss off, fat boy,” I said.

  Van Rijk pivoted and stalked away between the closely set tables. The other two were at his heels. The three of them disappeared into the waterfront confusion.

  I sat there for a time, thinking. I was a little bothered by Van Rijk’s threats, but they could have been a bluff and I decided I had handled the situation as well as could be expected. I was also a little curious about Van Rijk, and about his relationship with La Croix—but not enough to pursue the situation. I didn’t want, and could not afford, to let myself become involved in anything.

  I got on my feet and put it out of my mind. It was, I thought, time for another iced beer.

  Chapter Three

  THE OLD CATHAY Bar, on Jalan Barat, is one of Singapore’s many enigmas.

  It is an ancient, single-story building with an unpretentious façade that gives it the distinctive look of a Chinatown tenement. Its barnlike interior is perpetually hot and stifling, even at night, and the smell of joss—perfumed incense—permeates the smoke-died air. There are scarred wooden tables scattered throughout with no semblance of schematic placement; the bar, which is set along the rear wall, ends abruptly two-thirds of the building’s width—for no apparent reason, since the other third is blank. Over the backbar and on the walls of the room, fat pink ladies, naiads in diaphanous wisps of silk, pose obscenely amid blue names—a
n unintentional caricature of a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Eerie blue light from tiny lanterns on each of the tables gives an odd and ethereal quality to the people and to the furnishings.

  You would think, then, with all of this, that the clientele of the Old Cathay would be of a singular type—the lower, native class, perhaps, such as the habitués of the Seaman’s Bar—and that it would be relatively quiet, and never quite full even on the weekends. But you’d be wrong, and therein lies the enigma.

  Inexplicably, the Old Cathay attracts almost everyone in Singapore at some time or other. On any given night of the week, you consider yourself most fortunate if you can find a place to stand, let alone sit. And if by some miraculous stroke of luck you manage to get a table, it is an unwritten but strictly adhered to rule that you share it with the other patrons. You can, as I have, find yourself sitting next to a very proper and very drunk official in the British Embassy (“The Ambassador and I were discussing the Common Market situation this forenoon; about the bloody time something was done, don’t y’think?”); or a group of middle-aged, spinsterish schoolteachers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A., laughing nervously and casting furtive looks into shadowed corners (“We found the most marvelous wood carving today—a pair of hands, can you imagine, but they were from the Ratanakosin Dynasty, seventeenth century, and genuine, of course, I just couldn’t believe it when the man told me they were only . . .”); or a small, doe-eyed Dutchman with no fingers on his left hand, who will tell you, smiling proudly, that he once killed two men in a fight over a stolen pocketbook in an Amsterdam slum (“Mijnheer, I barely escaped with my life, do you know they are still looking for me and it has been ten years now . . .”); or a tall, handsome, splendid-bosomed Chinese prostitute, ludicrously named Gussie, who wears a brightly colored cheongsam and is adorned with every conceivable type of costume jewelry, and who smiles coquettishly with scarlet lips in a chalk-white face (“Five Straits dollars, Joe, what you say? I teach you all the tricks I know for five Straits dollars, you never be the same man again, eh, Joe?”).

  The Old Cathay caters to them all—and more. They flock there, night after night, to drink tall, cold stengahs, or Malayan arrack, or gin-and-quinine, or an oily, foul-tasting and cathartic native wine, or—in my case—an iced Anchor Beer that is so cold you can taste the ice crystals. And they pay, depending upon which, outrageously expensive or surprisingly moderate prices for the privilege. I go there mainly because Anchor Beer falls into the latter category, and because the atmosphere and the people you meet are never dull.

  It was midafternoon when I arrived. Even at that time, it was crowded with customers and alive with noise—the clink of glass against glass, the excited, high-pitched call of the multilingual Chinese waitresses as they shouted their orders to the three barmen, the heavy buzz of conversation. All of the tables were occupied, but I found an empty chair at a corner table. The two men there were drinking beer, and judging from their boisterous laughter and slightly thick voices, they had been at it for some time.

  I ordered my Anchor from one of the waitresses, and my choice of beverage solicited immediate approval from the two men. We introduced ourselves, and they were Allenby and Wainwright, two English tin miners down from Kuala Lumpur on a holiday. We told a lot of off-color stories and traded lies about our virility with the women we had known, and the beer flowed freely. They paid for most of it; I didn’t object.

  Wainwright and Allenby became very drunk finally, and they decided with much gravity that it was time they found a couple of sundals with which to spend the night. They wanted me to go with them, but I begged off and wished them luck and they staggered out arm in arm, leaving me with one full bottle of beer and a second on the way.

  Their seats were taken immediately by an Irishman and his rail-thin wife, who drank whisky over ice and kept pretty much to themselves. It was almost seven then, and I thought that I would be very wise to leave if I didn’t want to show up at Harry Rutledge’s godown in the morning with a throbbing head and a queasy stomach. I was not drunk, but I did have the beginnings of a fine edge. It was such a fine edge that I decided eventually to remain where I was for a while so as not to lose it, and when the two bottles of Anchor Beer that Allenby and Wainwright had paid for were gone, I ordered another.

  After a time the Irishman and his wife left, and a short, very fat man in a bowler hat and a young dark-haired girl wearing a white peasant blouse and a short multicolored skirt took their places. I thought at first the two of them were together, but when the fat man leaned over and said something in a low voice to the girl, she gave him a frosty look and told him to keep his nasty thoughts to himself. He got a very pained expression and instructed one of the Chinese waitresses hovering nearby to bring him a double gin. The girl ordered a stengah, which surprised me slightly because she did not look like the whisky-and-soda type.

  I was feeling pretty friendly by then, and I edged toward the girl, smiled and said, “You don’t look like the whisky-and-soda type.”

  She let me have the same frosty look she had given the fat man. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You can beg my pardon if you like.”

  That got the beginnings of a smile. She would be, I thought, very beautiful when she smiled. She was a tall girl, finely proportioned, and her face was small and symmetrical in a dark frame of luxuriant shoulder-length hair. I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes in the smoky blue light, but I decided they would probably be gray, or maybe hazel. Her voice had a Western inflection, with faint Oriental or Polynesian overtones, and that made it difficult to guess her homeland. She was perhaps twenty-one or -two and had an air of virginal innocence about her, and if I had been fully sober I most likely would not have spoken to her at all. As they say, she was almost young enough to have been my daughter.

  The waitress came by with the fat man’s double gin and the girl’s stengah. The fat man had had his courage buoyed by my limited success, and he offered, smiling, to pay for her drink. She ignored him pointedly as she opened her beaded handbag and gave the waitress two bills from inside.

  I said to her, “You’re almost young enough to be my daughter.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You certainly do beg a lot of pardons.”

  She studied me seriously. “Are you a bum or something?”

  “Not professionally.”

  “Well, you look a little like one.”

  “It’s nice of you to say so.”

  She took a small sip from her stengah. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

  “Not at all.”

  “If you are, you’ve got a very novel approach.”

  “You’re almost young enough to be my daughter,” I said again earnestly.

  “That doesn’t stop most men.”

  The fat man finished his double gin and left hurriedly. I felt a little sorry for him. A tall British sailor sat down in his place, and a plump Chinese whore named Rosie got up onto his lap. He began whispering in her ear, smiling foolishly, and she giggled and patted his leg and put his hand under her dress with practiced expertise.

  I said to the girl, “Would you believe me if I told you I only wanted someone to talk with?”

  “Now you’ve reverted to the standard line.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “It always is.”

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” I said. “I am Daniel Connell, ex-smuggler, ex-pilot, American expatriate, and a very lonely, lonely man.”

  “Oh God,” the girl said.

  “And who might you be?”

  “I really ought to tell you to go to hell, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She smiled then and she was beautiful and her smile was a sweet, bright thing that illuminated the generation gap between us, the world between us. Eve in the Garden, I thought. Pandora and the box, and Beauty and the Beast, and Jesus, Connell, you shouldn’t drink so
goddamned much beer! Two more bottles and you’ll be up on the table, quoting passages from Tennyson and Hemingway and Uncle Remus. Go home, go to bed. Sober up, wise up, grow up, throw up . . .

  “My name is Tina Kellogg,” the girl said. “And I don’t know why I’m telling you even that much.”

  I shook my head a couple of times to clear it. “I have a trusting face.”

  “As a matter of fact, you do.”

  “A very large asset in my former line of work.”

  “Were you really a smuggler, Mr. Connell?”

  “Dan. Oh yes, I was really a smuggler.”

  “What did you smuggle?”

  “All sorts of things.”

  “It sounds very exciting.”

  “It was ugly and cheap and dirty.”

  “Oh. Is that why you don’t do it any more?”

  “Part of the reason.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said too harshly, and Tina’s smile faded and vanished. I put on a small, apologetic one of my own to bring it back. “Sorry. I seem to be feeling a little maudlin tonight.”

  “I understand.”

  “Sure you do. Well now, Tina Kellogg, tell me about Tina Kellogg.”

  “She’s not very interesting, really.”

  “On the contrary.”

  “Well, all right, you asked for it. Let’s see. I was born in the Hawaiian Islands twenty-two years ago, of an American father and a Hawaiian mother. I graduated from the University of Hawaii last year, with a degree in journalism. I’ve been in Singapore only a few days, staying at the apartment of a girl I knew in college; the Orient has always fascinated me, and I decided to combine a vacation trip here with a series of articles on the area. I’m hoping to use the articles to land a staff position with one of the news or travel magazines in the States.”